Welcome to Thoughty Thursday here at More Cowbell! This is the day y’all get an open window into the twisty tunnels of trivial things that litter my brain.

Today’s topic (in case you hadn’t guessed) is swearing. Baby Girl is close enough to speech that it’s time to pay better attention to my own and, well, hmmm…

I’m sure you’ve noticed that (periodically) I swear. I think about everyone does, at least when things aren’t going smoothly. Well, OK…everyone but my Aunt Sherry who taught kindergarten for 30+ years.

If you’re like ME, you try your best not to swear, but there are just times when only the blue words will work. On those occasions, they let out j-u-u-u-s-t enough steam to keep me from blowing my stack.

If you’re like my Aunt Sherry, curse words are a rare, almost extinct kind of occurrence. (We all had our mouths hanging open the ONE TIME she called my cousin Aaron “a creep.” Although at that age, he really was one.)

Photo from YearCats.com

For still others in my circle of family and friends, it’s not uncommon for strangers to approach them and ask “if they kiss their mother with that mouth?!!”

I’ll confess to being in the middle of the Blue Words Super Highway.

If I’m in pain, or the PMS Fairy comes to visit me, it’s pretty likely I’m gonna turn the air blue with some juicy gooey-delicious swear words. I just am.

But I try to refrain. And I don’t swear around the oldest or youngest populations (or my Aunt Sherry). It just feels…wrong, and kind of disrespectful.

One thing that’s really helping my current Clean Mouth Campaign is that I’m related to SO many creatively clean potty mouths. I’ve got TONS of funny variety to help me stay on the non-swearing side of the street.

Or “Dude, YOU are just a turtleneck with ears!” (translation: “Dickhead!”)

Rude salespeople will earn choice phrases like, “That guy shoulda been a belly shot” or “What a waste of a good swimmer.”

Then there’s my very favorite way he describes “white trash”: “Sis, this place was supposed to be a ‘resort’ but it was ‘Whiskey Tango’ Central over there.”

Really, my whole family has the knack:

My cousin Carrie, when she’s pissed off at her hubby, yells: “Well God BLESS!” in a super funny-scary voice. Or “Two tears in a bucket…” (Cause “bucket” rhymes with “f*c% it!”) She kills me every time she says it.

Another cousin’s way to call you an idiot is to say, “You need Jesus.”

Computer dude cousins reference their boneheaded end-users as “having an I D 10 T Error” (pronounced “eye-dee-ten-tee,” which is easily translated on paper.

My mother’s most frequent warning, when I was getting close to THE LINE was to say, “Jennifer Jo…” (in that spooky voice ALL parents seem to master). She’d follow it up with, “You’re tap dancing on my last nerve!!!”

And when I was about to cross the point of no return into DEEP doo-doo, she’d say “Are we gonna have a donkey barbecue?” (That would be an “ass chewin’.”)

There’s the ever popular “Shut the front door!” (I don’t have to translate that, right?)

Plus, I grew up in a neighborhood where, if you weren’t black, you were Jewish (I am neither) so I’ve got a creative arsenal of Yiddish words to help me out. “Schmuck” is my all-time favorite way to call someone “a stupid tiny peckerhead.” (List of English words of Yiddish origin.)

But I’d say my MOST preferred way to cleanly drop the F-Bomb, adopted by one of my Besties and adored by everyone in my circle, is to say:

“FOCUS, people!” or “You need to focus!!”

The translation for this can be found here, or you can just scroll down.

A few more clicks.

Down a little more…

Just a liiiiiittle further…..

OK, this should be far enough for y’all to have shooed your youngers and elders away:

Fuck

Off

Cuz

Ur

Stupid

What’s the most creative swearing being done in your neck of the woods? Do you have any “clean” delights to share? We’re aiming for words and phrases we can say in front of Grandma without making her keel over. (Enquiring minds always want to know these things here at More Cowbell!)

Jenny

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About Jenny Hansen

Avid seeker of "more"...More words, more creativity, More Cowbell! My passion is finding those qualities that are unique in every person and every piece of fiction.
Founding blogger at Writers In The Storm (http://writersinthestorm.wordpress.com). Write on!

103 Responses to 10 Creative Ways To Express Your “Inner F-Bomb”

Wow, Jenny. You have an interesting family! Between the chicken story and this…

When I first met hubs he was in the Navy, and he literally swore like a sailor. It took a little getting used to, as my parents rarely swore. Once we got married and he started working in the private sector, he had to clean up his language (there’s ladies and HR people around, folks), which was pretty funny to be a bystander to. And then when we had kids, he had to clean it up even more. Our boys still get a kick out of dad’s favorite saying: “Oh, for crying out loud!” We really do try to keep it clean (“crap” and “damn” are pretty much our limit these days), because they hear so much bad language from their peers, and I feel (my personal opinion) that continual swearing limits how and with whom you can interact.

Incidentally, I ran across a news article a while back that shows that swearing helps you tolerate pain better (but only if you don’t usually swear in your day-to-day life; if you’re a habitual swearer, this won’t work). I dug up the article link, if anyone’s interested; they actually did studies with folks holding their hands in ice water: http://healthland.time.com/2011/11/23/why-swearing-sparingly-can-help-kill-pain/

Haha! Super funny. I love your brother’s inventive cursing. I tend to do most of my cursing in Spanish, so I also do my almost-cursing in Spanish as well. I say Miercoles (wednesday) instead of Mierda(shit) because you can say it in front of anybody. Hijo de Puta is son of a bitch, but we shorten in to Hijue puta (at least in Ecuador). So I just say Hijue. It just means Son of a, which isn’t actually bad. In English I do like to use the phrase Douche Bag, although I don’t consider it cursing. I could be talking about shopping for feminine products. When driving around idiots, I shorten it to D.B. I’m not sure why, but I like it. I am in love with “FOCUS”, so I’m going to start using that. Especially at work meetings that are a total waste of time. “Focus, people!” Heehee

What fun! As non-swearers (at least me – Hubby started out as one, and THEN he joined the Navy!), we’ve used a few different ones over the years.

In Hubby’s gentle years, he used to say “Oh, Garbage!” or “Oh, Grunt!” The last struck me as so funny that one time, after about six months of it, I grunted after he said it. I was ROFL, he was shocked, and Oh Grunt disappeared from his vocabulary. Drat!

The one I picked up when my oldest was a toddler was “Criminently, Trigger!” (she was hooked on Disney’s Robin Hood.) Two more kids and several years later, they were still cracking up when I said it, at least until I dropped the “Trigger” out of it.

Mostly now I just “oh-oh-oh-oh-oh” if I hurt myself, and fume inwardly if I’m mad. The worst I’ll get is damn-damn-damn, and it shocks them all.

When Jenny writes a good piece(not a Pi$$$) she always deserves a (ReepLay): AND THIS IS FROM MY WELL TRAVELLED NAVY ERA:, As off we start we our baguette munching folks who swear the guy ahead of the in that black citroen Drives like a Dice and then bets he is AN Y(E) VOIE RIEN(From Ivory Coast)(Translates well a a one eyed Dice):(bet you already started translation and word twisting) and sightly north west of them the GENTS DIFFER FROM THE LADIES AND WEAR all kinds of Mou(moet)staches as opposed to the other gender, then south to the beaches of the Mediterranean sea where the favourite swear thing is related to God’s Creation: either it is a FANCULLO(or a$$ inside an A$$) or the EVOIRIEN thingie. While the other gender swears gently with the word Tambourine(bet ya banged one sometime) or Flute if you ever whispered into one. Pass the Suez canal; most $WEAR$ ARE GESTATIOUS AND HARD TO XPLAIN.Back here in the east coast, all return to normal and we join Jenny’s Piece. I have more but willing to pass the soap test.!

My husband can swear for 20 minutes straight and never say the same word twice. He is very inventive, and the children learned to swear artfully, increasing their vocabulary each year when, ironically, we put up the Christmas tree.

OMG I love your family – those alternate curse words are an absolute riot!
You know I love Shut The Front Door and I am totally going to be adopting FOCUS! LOL!
Growing up, my Mom being from the Dominican Republic, she didn’t have any hang ups around swearing so it was always pretty loose at my house. And as I’ve gotten older, I’ve really turned swearing into an art form. I drop F-Bombs and a million variations like nobody’s business (except at work or around little ears). I’ve gotten many evil looks from parents in stores when I am shopping and having an F-bomb attack and I always end up feeling like a total Douche. And sometimes I worry it makes me sound trashy…so I’ve definitely tried to “tone” it down the last while…at least when I am outside the house or the camp. LOL!
So for clean versions, I don’t have much for ya. I’ll be borrowing some of your family’s and watching your comments to learn a few ditties. LOL!!!

I’ll tell you I love to hear inventive cursing – Chuck Wendig has turned the potty mouth into an art form. But I’m with Kathy in that I don’t want my daughter to get into trouble for her mouth. While she’s learning to talk and such, I really need to clean it up…and it’s HARD!

You have four of the beasties and “tap dancing on your last nerve” works? COOL! I only have one so I’m hoping for some success. Another fave from one of my gal pals is, “Did I stutter?” (referring to “no”)

& SHE IS SO GOOD AT STARTING THE OLD MILL: my memory is back!!, my memory is back!!(see 1st post) back in sailor land(IS THERE ONE?) where wind carries the pain and back to the baguette munching&beret wearing who would yell:C’est une pedale(Pedal) go figure or c’est une swisse_ (__+__)=make the plus red>>(he is a swiss)while their cheese’s famous full oh Ho..$$ while the danes swear with dairy words and the germans with, of course, Gross&Klein(grand et petit) replies the Frenchies(translates big and small) go figure..well I swear am stopping because of the soap challenge.

I love two tears in a bucket. That’s hilarious. The Focus thing is also awesome. I’m sharing that with my hubby. I know he’s going to be in business meetings now going, FOCUS people!! I bought my daughter a “Bitch” snow globe last year from Urban Outfitters for Christmas. That seems to be her cuss word of choice. When she flips a U-turn she calls it flipping a bitch. Really she never used to cuss much. Then the control freak started driving and learned she can’t control the universe like she does our household. I think the experience has been a tad frustrating for her!

Your relatives crack me up! Easy to see where your creativity came from. My mother would rather die than come close to swearing (she thought “sucker” was obscene)…so the day we pushed her over the edge, she dropped THE twenty-ton “F bomb,” she had a carful of stunned, open-mouthed children. We were quiet the rest of the trip, trying to get our heads around THAT!

Never heard it again from her mouth. Sure wish I remember what we did that earned it….

I’ve looked forward to this post since the little teaser you sent out yesterday! Way to funny! Lots of good ideas here. Unfortunately our family doesn’t disguise our curse words at all. I let my children watch Stand By Me (the movie about the boys who go out searching for the dead body). Great movie, but the amount of curse words were shocking. Anyway, after the lard a** scene in the movie, I have to be careful with my nine year old daughter. Whenever she see’s an extremely large person she feels that it is acceptable to scream out lard a**. She let it fly once at the grocery store. I was so embarrassed we had to leave!

Oh. My. God!!!! Out of the mouth of babes. How awful would it be to have your kid call someone a lard-ass in a store. There is something really satisfying about the word a$$ though. Jackass is a particular fave of mine. But, like Jillian, you are NOT helping my quest!!!

Since I have been a school teacher, I had to have invented ways to express myself. I would use Turkey Trot, Fudruckers (which is a name of a restaurant here), CRACKERS, Cracker Jacks and I have used the word Focus, but not in that context. I wish I had known about it. I used it so much, I would have enjoyed (grinned to self) every time I said it. LOL. But I have to admit there are times I said the dirty word in my head when the class pushed me too far. Of course at home I would say the dirty word out loud. Loved your blog, Thanks a million for the laugh.

Well Jenny, I think your family is one of the more inventive creators of language I’ve heard in some time. LOL

I’m afraid I am speechless, as in I really don’t have anything to add to that.

I guess I can say I do relate to your fears with baby girl. I’ll never forget when my oldest son came home from school one day and let out a good one. I turned to him in shock and didn’t know quite what to say. He was only five. What can you say to them when they don’t really know what they’ve said?

So after that, we try to keep it PG. Because if I was to let one loose now in front of them, boy would I never hear the end of it, you know what I mean? Not worth it. I have a reputation to uphold. And it’s called respect. :)

Love the comment, Karen! It’s funny, my husband had an incident when he was like five where he said a string of REALLY bad words and the kid he was talking to had his mouth hit the floor and he ran and told hubby’s mom. He’s actually got a cleaner mouth than me now. I think he got it out of his system early.

I’d have to agree. Your family is pretty creative. We swear too much around here, although we try to keep it under wraps as Grace has picked it all up. She very rarely swears, but we need to be more careful, lol. So far we’ve been lucky with school, thank goodness.

I have to admit that I was a little concerned when I read your title Jenny! I’m one of those people who rarely swears. While I have some moral reasons for my own restraint, it also means that you get to come up with really creative ways to express your exasperation at the stupidity of certain members of the human race. The ones you gave above were priceless! Moreover, when you do utter a cuss word from time to time, it has real punch. The guy who uses the F-word every other sentence has nowhere to go when he’s really pissed off. What’s left to say? When my friend who never said anything bad finally called someone a b*tch, we knew she was ready to throw-down.

LOL, Julie…you never need to be worried over here, darling. We try to keep it mostly clean. I’d like to be known for some creative swear techniques. All the peeps here at More Cowbell are helping me out with that. :-)

LOL, Jenny. By the way, when your kids start repeating what you say, it’s an eye-opener for what you sound like. My kids have said, “Holy crap!” more than once, and my hubby looks at me like “You did that.” Oops. Guilty. Maybe I should be saying, “Holy Cowbell!” instead. ;)

An ex-wife used to say Chuck U. Farley. If you want to hear me cuss, you have to be in the car with me when some clown in front parks at a green light or drives 10 mph below the speed limit in the left lane or other such stuff.

This is hilarious, Jenny. There was no swearing in our house, not even round about ways of getting there. In fact, my mom considered “geez” a swear word so there was hell to pay every time I used it. I’m wondering if I can come live with your family for a little while? We’ll call it “research”. :)

LMAO. I am such a potty mouth and The Spawn is getting to that age where I have to clean up my mouth. I use GOD….zilla or GOD….bless America. The GOD part is always the loud part.

I was so bad with my nephews. They were 10 and 6 and went to correct me after I corrected them and I told them that I served in the Air Force and when they were old enough to DIE for their country, they could use whatever poor vocabulary words they chose. Using cuss words is the one perk when you’re staring down the barrel of wrinkles and saggy boobs :P.

But I am still working to clean up my mouth. I love the words assclown and asshat too much, though. *sigh*

My mother has been incapable of harnessing her mouth since I was a wee thing, which she noticed when I dropped a spoon and said, “Oh, sit. Now I haf to get anodder futting spoon.” (Gotta admire my usage though!)

One of my admired little insults comes from my summers in Arkansas, where someone would say something like, “Now, Stacie Ann just had the ugliest baby you ever did see…bless her heart.”

It also made me incontrovertibly suspicious of that phrase when it’s applied to me.

I definitely have a potty mouth as well, and I attempt to keep my blog rated PG. One nice little substitution I learned from How I Met Your Mother is “grinch” as a substitution for “bitch.”

Do you ever watch Modern Family? Phil is a good example of how I “swear”, although I wouldn’t call it anything close to swearing. He says things like “Sweet Caroline”. Nothing that actually sounds like anything, but makes you laugh when you hear it.

My parents never cursed when we were kids (still don’t) so it’s passed on I guess.

My sister DOES use “Shut the front door” though. Has for a loooong time. :)

I cuss. I love the creative use of language. My late sister used the Spanish pendjo which I know she didn’t know what it meant. I stick to Mother English. I’ve learned to tone ot down when there are potentially sensitive ears around. Most of the time it’s aimed at TV dorks and idiot drivers (anyone but myself) with the windows rolled up. I was told not to read Catcher in the Rye because it had one bad word in it and had an entire book to build up to it. A bookstore clerk looked askance at me because I bought Dick Gregory’s bio. Won’t and don’t use the word but you can guess what it was.

I am seriously crying, I have been laughing so hard. Your brother should be doing “Stand-Up!” (And you, too.) Whew!! But I’m not gonna tell you all the things I say. (I’m a female alone, a size small, often doing a man’s job. That calls for some serious FOCUS-ing.)

I’ve bookmarked this and need to start a notebook of new words. With the grandkids getting older, I have been trying to say “cry me a bucket” more often or “freakin’ frick frack….” (It can go on and on until I’ve calmed down.) But, I need some more code words.

I’m one of those rare people who never swear (and I’m in my twenties, so even rarer for my age). And no, not even when I was in labour. My mum and siblings all swear, as does my husband (he’s had to tone it down since we had kids), but my Dad very very rarely swears, and has always made a point of not swearing in front of his children. He comes out with some great phrases. Once he tripped over a wheelbarrow and went tumbling and rather than swearing he said very loudly, “Blimey teddy” which is one of his favourite phrases. Another one he uses is ‘bulldust’ instead of the more colourful ‘bullsh**’. For people he thinks are idiots/losers he calls them ‘dropkicks’ (which is an Aussie slang term).

Some words I use include: crud, poop, darn it, son of a diddly (from the Simpsons), jeepers creepers.

When I was a kid we came up with the sneaky ‘Richard Cranium’ (D**khead). Mum was onto us though and we got in trouble anyway.

Completely curse free. Made the choice early on. In high school my friends were forever trying to get to say a swear word, but I never did. I don’t even say the tame ones that most people don’t even consider swearing anymore. :)

LOL, Marilag. I agree that it’s fun and freeing but I’ll tell you, I got my mouth washed out with Irish Spring at like 5 years old for the F-Bomb and I still remember it. I KNOW my daughter will pick it up if I’m slinging it, and with my luck she’s say it in church!

When I’m at home, I’m almost as bad a sailor with foul language….but when I’m around little ones – or the elderly – I find myself saying ‘Son of a Biscuit-Eater’, ‘Ah, hell’, ‘Gosh darnit!’ and ‘That Vaccumes’ :)

When my eldest was really little I was so afraid I would get a call from the school and find he was saying “Jesus f’n Christ!”on the playground. Thank goodness it never happened and the hubby seems to say it much less now. But the colorful language still seems to fly behind closed doors when he sits down to a video game. It doesn’t go unheard. I will have to borrow some of your suggestions here and see if I can get him yelling some new things. “Focus! Focus!” LOL

I, myself, like holy cheese balls and oh cheesitz. Thanks for the great post Jenny!

Great post, Jenny. My father never swears, but does a lot of very short prayers (called ejaculations, really, seriously) while driving. “:Holy Jehosaphat” was a favorite as was “Holy mackerel”–well, that’s not a prayer. We knew we were in for a spanking if we ever heard the entire prayer of “Jesus, Mary, Joseph”, because it was time to run. He was in his seventies when he called someone a dildohead while driving, My husband and I looked at each other in shock–later we wondered if he knew what that even meant.

My husband got in deep trouble when our oldest son asked me (at one year old) “Have you seen my f**king bottle?” We tried hard to keep it clean, but gave up when the youngest son, aged 8 or 9, called his brother a “gluttonous whore” for eating all the snacks.

I love the alternatives that you and your commenters have listed–at least they don’t sound like some 18th-century pirate!

LMAO over “gluttonous whore!” Oh my God, that’s funny. And I like 18th century pirates. I’ll tell you the best swearing I ever heard was by Christopher Moore in “Fluke” when he says, “Heinous fuckery most foul!”

There’s nothing quite like the good ‘ol Swedish “UFF-dah!” And in my family, the F-word could also mean f-a-r-t… Yep, a swear word. As was the S.U. word (shut up). My grandmother swapped ‘fart’ out with ‘fluff,’ which has stuck big time.

We “pick a finger,” and point to the one we want the other to choose, meaning “F%c* Off. The teens of course aren’t fooled any longer.
I’ve had moments when I was tempted to have them pick that particular finger, but The Look still suffices.
Mama still got eyezzzz.

My grandmother, when she was exasperated use to say “Good Night Nurse” I have no idea why. I was also shocked when my oh so prim mother called a stupid driver a “Fart Blossom” My husband is fond of saying “he suffers from Rectal Cranial impaction” (translation head up his ass). I have been homebound for awhile and I find with no one but the dogs to hear me, swear words just are not very satisfying anymore.

My brother was about 8 years older than me, so by about age 6 or 7…I had quite a large vocabulary of blue words. His friends helped “educate” me as well (not on purpose, of course.) The first ‘bad’ word I ever said in front of a parent was “piss” as in – I needed to go take one. The boys said this all the time and I didn’t even know it was bad. Mom (stifling a laugh, but not very well) with a look of utter surprise simply asked me where I heard that word. I told her. I wasn’t scolded. I WAS scolded when I was older (13 or so) for calling someone a “dork.” Also a word used openly by many. I had no idea that, at it’s root, was referencing male genitalia (real or fake.) They did NOT explain WHY it was not appropriate…but it didn’t really stop me from saying it. Nowadays it doesn’t even register on anyone’s list of blue words.
I have nieces, a toddler next door and a neighbor who’s expecting. I should probably start watching it more closely. When one doesn’t have children…the words just fly out very naturally.
What’s weird is the last time I injured myself (fingers got smashed in a spring-loaded door) – I *could* have said ANYTHING and nobody would have raised and eyebrow….but I didn’t. I guess the brain just shut off any thought at all except for the word “OW!”